


locked eyes in the midday sunspark

by friendly_ficus



Series: love songs on repeat [2]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, F/F, Fluff and Angst, but like... light angst, every week we get more Lore nothing is canon compliant anymore, headcanons galore. cannot believe that i guessed perfectly that ayda's on her fourth incarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22675852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: One of her earliest memories is piecing a skeleton back together bone by bone, matching a chalk outline left in one of the unused storage rooms of the Compass Points Library. The skull there, each vertebrate descending in the proper order, each finger bone and kneecap and toe following the simply worded instructions and detailed pictorial guide etched into the wall. Once the task was finished, she’d hefted the book of pirate spells and set it on the bones, stumbling back from the exhalation of magic in the air.(Do you owe the past anything? Who does the future belong to?)
Relationships: Ayda Aguefort/Figueroth Faeth
Series: love songs on repeat [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617757
Comments: 12
Kudos: 135





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> first half light angst and character study, second half so sweet it’ll rot your teeth; meant this to just be ayda adjusting to life in solace fluff but it acquired this first chapter somewhere along the way. second chapter runs a little parallel to _caught in a landslide of emotion_ but that is in no way required reading to understand this fic

One of her earliest memories is piecing a skeleton back together bone by bone, matching a chalk outline left in one of the unused storage rooms of the Compass Points Library. The skull there, each vertebrate descending in the proper order, each finger bone and kneecap and toe following the simply worded instructions and detailed pictorial guide etched into the wall. Once the task was finished, she’d hefted the book of pirate spells and set it on the bones, stumbling back from the exhalation of magic in the air.

A withered hand had patted her shoulder gently and the aging voice of Rawlins said, “Thank you, Quartermaster. You always set me to rights. Now, back to the front desk with me, I suppose.”

“Will you teach me something?” she’d asked, scratching at a spot on her downy wings until sparks flew from it.

“That depends,” he had replied. “Are you a pirate?”

“I don’t know the qualifications.” She had liked the word  _ qualifications  _ at that age; it demanded specificity. She still likes it.

“Then I suppose you are not yet a pirate.” He left the room and she heard his shuffling footsteps fade down the hall, flesh and cloth and rings once more where there had been naught but bone.

This is her first experience with rebirth.

\---

The first Ayda to reside on Leviathan had clearly not expected to die there; there are no notes from her, on paper or etched into anything else. There is barely any evidence of her existence beyond a short list of material things—a half-melted candle gathering dust on the mantle that smelled of a strange spice, a set of leather bracers tooled with motifs long out of fashion, the library charter in its heavily enchanted case with the name  _ Ayda Aguefort  _ emblazoned in shining ink.

The second Ayda on Leviathan left notes about the charter specifically, among her many, many journals and scrolls. 

_ Principled? Driven? A success in establishing something, _ she had written.  _ The question remains—why? What is the purpose of a library? What is the purpose of a librarian? What is the purpose of this one? _

The only writing of the first Ayda that exists is her name on the charter and a note, folded and re-folded many times. Some kind of residue left a faded smear of color on the bottom of the parchment, beneath the very distinct handwriting:  _ Congratulations—now remember that you’re brave, darling. _

Ayda has no notes on any of her previous incarnations asking Garthy O’Brien anything about the message. In her seventeen years on the floating island, she doesn’t ask either.

_ The library was a permanent sort of thing,  _ Ayda thinks now, as she reviews glyphs and components for a plane shift spell,  _ perhaps it is not that she was unconcerned with death; perhaps she simply did not know she would be reborn. _

\---

The second Ayda left written records, meticulously labeled and dated. Notes on her own physiology, speculations on the precedent set by her rebirth. Instructions for organizing and integrating new books into library records and recipes for allergy cures and salaries for various future positions are all laid out in her journals.

The writing is formulaic, something that Ayda has found in turns comforting and dull. Nothing is ever revelatory in these notes; there are flashes of inspiration and discovery but they do not change the format that the second Ayda followed year to year. Ayda has wondered, sometimes, if the style of the journals was so consistent to make up for the fact that the first Ayda left nothing beyond the charter as a foundation. She’s wondered if the second Ayda felt any doubt at consigning her predecessor to the past, at writing that any study of her was a waste. The charter was the only thing that provided her any guidance and it must have been worrying, in those early years before pirates began bringing her books to add to the collection.

The second Ayda had been very public-facing because she’d needed to be—she’d needed to go out and convince people to get library cards and convince them to return at least some of the books they’d borrowed and convince, convince,  _ convince. _ She had not enjoyed it. She had not enjoyed much of what she’d done, but Ayda is grateful for the groundwork and the heavy lifting that were finished in those years. The results are clear even now; she sees them in the city funding and the fact that the shelves are never left entirely barren. 

For all the talking to people that the second Ayda did, though, she left little advice on the subject. There are brief mentions of feeling awkward and other, but never any instructions on how to  _ fix  _ that feeling. It is a little unusual, Ayda thinks, that she was able to leave instructions for what to do in the event that the island capsized or lost all gravity or any other number of scenarios, but couldn’t capture a decisive strategy for social interaction.

Perhaps that is not so strange, though. Ayda hasn’t managed an ideal one yet.

\---

The third Ayda took a wholly different view on past lives. Not content to leave the charter member of the Compass Points library to a faded memory, she worked constantly to build out the shell of who that person might’ve been. 

The bracers, the candle, the note, they fascinated her. She took wax scrapings and put them through various magical tests, etched runes into a spyglass to see through illusions and identify different schools of magic. She invested herself in the past, looking for an answer to a question the second Ayda had ignored.

_ The Ayda before me was a curator,  _ she left scribbled in the margins of pages covered in chemical equations and notes on the rate of decay for different types of parchment.  _ The Ayda before her is a mystery and I am an investigator—what is the library for, if it is not to answer questions? What is the past for, if not resurrection? Am I not a product of such practice? _

Her notes were not as well-kept as her predecessor—she would divert from her format frequently and didn’t keep things in chronological order. And such a volume of them; when Ayda grew old enough to be interested in the desk in the observatory, she’d had to shift through hundreds of bits of parchment.

She didn’t write much about life outside the library, not in the way the second Ayda did. There are no notes from meetings with the denizens of Leviathan or breakdowns of crew makeups from her years as librarian, only lists of reagents and their reactivity. It’s clear now, to Ayda, that no one was knocking on the door for her, no one was extending her a hand of friendship. Brief mentions of Jamina and rare notes on conversations with Garthy about acquiring supplies are the only instances of interaction with other people among her disordered records. She didn’t write about being lonely, but none of her previous incarnations did either. (Ayda has considered that she might be the first, the only one to be so deeply lonely even surrounded by books and star charts and maps of ocean currents.)

She’d died abruptly, the third Ayda. There were several notes on experiments expectant of results, and several questions left unanswered. When Ayda was thirteen, she’d found a note left scribbled on an end table dated for, when else, thirteen years previous.

_ Leviathan is burning. I can see it moored—Bill Seacaster’s ship. What will happen now? Will there be a new king? This will disrupt my work. I will not let them take my library.  _

\---

The fourth Ayda-on-Leviathan, who is  _ Ayda,  _ has a relationship with the library best described as contradictory. It is not that she dislikes it—she has nothing to compare it to, knows no other home but the observatory and the space between bookshelves—but she is... sometimes not content. There are the stars above her, changing as Leviathan moves through the seas, but they are little comfort to a young girl. There are the library patrons, but they don’t seek her out very often; there is the library staff, but they look to her for guidance from the time she takes her first unsteady steps.

(When Ayda puts her thoughts on paper they spill out in waves;  _ This is no cage/but I am caught/sure as a songbird,  _ she’d written in one of her poetry phases. But she is  _ not  _ caught, not really, she could leave at any time, she could go—)

When she is six years old, she discovers her favorite book:  _ The Definitive Treatise on Magical Contracts,  _ by H. J. Harrowmont.

When she is eight years old, she has a rickety bookshelf set against one of the empty walls and adds the library’s first book on friendship:  _ Customs and Camaraderies on the Fifth Sea,  _ by Carolyn Shore.

When she is ten years old, she has enough books to dedicate a new section of the Compass Points Library, adding a row to the second Ayda’s plans for new departments. That day she buys herself an orange and each section tastes impossibly sweet.

When she is thirteen, organizing the spellwork section, she comes across  _ Prolegomena to Any Future Magicks,  _ by A. Aguefort. She then spends three weeks methodically working back through all of the notes left for her, searching for a mention of her father and coming up empty-handed. 

When she is fifteen there is a riot on Leviathan and Rawlins’ book is stolen, reducing him again to bones. She spends four harrowing days ducking into doorways and behind walls hunting it down, piecing together remnants of parrots and banana peels and burning and burning and burning all the while, viciously lonely and certain that something is wrong with the world. She’s bitter, a dried up orange with too much pith—why is this  _ her  _ job, why does she live on Leviathan anyway, why is the only person she can rely on the one she sees in the mirror—furious not that  _ a  _ book has been stolen but that  _ this  _ book has been stolen.

When she is sixteen Garthy O’Brien looks over her runes and nods, connects her to a tattoo artist that does not protest when she adds a drop of her own blood to the ink, when it turns to fire on contact with her arms. 

When she is seventeen—

When she is seventeen—

When she is seventeen she makes her first friend she meets the greatest wizard of the age she makes more friends through the transitive property she goes to Fallinel she goes to a party she leaves a party to follow a girl she kisses a girl and the girl smiles and asks her to come with them and Ayda, joyful and breathless and full of doubts and dreams and potential paths to failure, agrees to leave her library.

\---

Maybe if the first Ayda had known, she would've left advice for this situation. It's possible. It would have been  _ useful,  _ to have someone leave a guide on closing up the library and leaving Leviathan to go and be with friends and the girl you like. To go and be anywhere that isn't Leviathan. Maybe the first Ayda had been somewhere before Leviathan.

But the first and second and third Ayda hadn’t been concerned with friendship, not the way Ayda-who-is-Ayda is. The friendship section of the library is wholly her design, an effort to obtain something out of reach until now. It is the work of nine years, that wall of tomes. She steals a moment between studying iterations of plane-altering spells to look up at the towering shelves, to run her hand along the books and step lightly through the many restricted sections. 

It is not a betrayal. It is not. It is only uncertainty, only the first and second and third Ayda’s work on the library, and her own work, and the only home she’s ever had—but she wants this, she wants friends and a life and a girl who likes her, who called her perfect. She wants Plane Shift and Solace and whatever the future looks like, terrifying and amorphous and full of unclear terms and unknown qualifications.

(“I am afraid of this,” Ayda says to her mirror. Her reflection does not provide an answer.)

She brings the first Ayda’s bracers, the second Ayda’s enchanted ink bottle, the third Ayda’s spyglass. She packs them alongside her spell components, with the things she’s gathered over the last seventeen years.

Ayda hauls the enchanted case with the library charter to Jamina Joy, who heaves a mechanical sigh and agrees to look after the building. She stops by Garthy’s place because it seems like the proper thing to do, seems like something she’d have liked someone to do for  _ her  _ before leaving her or forgetting her or abandoning her or  _ whatever  _ it is that her father did that set her on Leviathan.

They look at her and smile, something complicated in their expression that she would normally want to untangle, but she’s looking in the direction of Solace already and thinking of Fig and Adaine and a future she fears and wants more than anything.

“You’re very brave, darling,” they say.

Ayda nods, a single bob of her head. She knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title for this fic comes from the song 'Heart On My Sleeve' by Mary Lambert, which is a Figayda Song i make the playlist rules now and it's on there  
> i just... have a lot of feelings?? about ayda?? idk anyway this is the Serious Chapter and the next one is just like, fluff.  
> it's hard to imagine what ayda's life was like on leviathan, seriously seems like it would suck to grow up there but i didn't want to Dwell on that too much - it was really lonely and difficult but now the future's looking bright! hope her pov comes across alright; it's always difficult for me to venture into writing from new character perspectives, especially since we've only known her for a (relatively) short time.  
> next time, a fic can have a little chat log!! as a treat!!: **Ayda:** Gorgug, you have been in a relationship.  
>  **jorjuj:** that is correct  
>  **Ayda:** I believe that Fig and I are in a relationship.  
>  **jorjuj:** that's awesome she really likes you
> 
> hope this chapter was good, leave a comment and let me know what you think! i really treasure them! :)


	2. your favorite star on the best night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bit by bit, piece by piece, Ayda builds a life in Solace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the risk of making subtext text, the future is _yours._

After everything, Ayda comes to Solace in the early days of summer. She and Fig have been talking, always talking or stealing away to pocket dimensions or meeting up thanks to judicious use of teleportation magic—but after things with Kalina and the Nightmare King had ended, Ayda had wanted to see more of the world and Fig had wanted to reassure herself of her parents’ health by sticking around the Academy to finish the semester. 

(“This isn’t us taking a break,” Fig had said, twisting her hands together in a gesture that Ayda had learned corresponded to anxiety. “Unless you want to, to take a break? I know we haven’t known each other long—”

“I never want to be apart from you,” Ayda had replied, turning away from the horizon to look her girlfriend in the face. “I just. I just also want to see what’s out there.”

“That’s good,” she’d shuddered, hands relaxing. “That’s good. Let’s talk about travel itineraries; I should give you Lola’s number, she’s great at logistics.”

_ Relief,  _ Ayda had thought.  _ She’s so brilliant, so amazing, the last stars in the sky are nothing in comparison to the light of my beloved—) _

At the beginning of summer, Ayda comes to Elmville with her things to say  _ yes  _ to Fig’s perpetual offer to stay.

\---

She’s uncertain of the terms, at first. She arrives on the doorstep and shifts her weight, knowing that Fig knows she’s coming but not knowing what that  _ means,  _ not yet. She raises her hands and knocks twice.

Fig wrenches open the door to the manor and smiles, sings out her greeting and pulls Ayda inside, leads her to a room that’s hers if she wants it. Sandralynn looks up from a circle of junior scouts assembled in the living room to call out a hello. Tracker and Kristen pop their heads out of the kitchen to say hi. It’s a lot all at once, and once they’re upstairs in the simple bedroom Fig whips her hands through a spell, a dome of magic settling around them both.

“Do you want it to be warmer or cooler?” is the first thing she asks. “I’m still figuring out what I can do with this thing, but I know I can change the temperature.”

“It’s fine,” Ayda says, a little overwhelmed. “You are happy to see me.”

It wasn’t a question, but Fig nods. “I’m  _ really  _ happy you’re here. I know we see each other pretty often and I know we talk every day and I hope you’re not gonna get annoyed with me but I just—the idea that you’ll be around makes me  _ so  _ happy.”

“You are not just indulging me, then? This is not a moment where your compassion gets the better of you?” Not that Ayda’s been worried about that, or anything.

Fig shakes her head, says “No, I’m not indulging you. You're—you’re welcome here, you’re welcome on the tour bus if you want, you’re welcome wherever I am, always.”

She then picks up a throw pillow, plants her face directly into it, and lets out a shriek.

Ayda blinks, alarmed, and moves to put her arm around Fig’s shoulders.

“Sorry!” Fig cries, muffled by the pillow, “sorry, fuck, this is so hard for me and I practiced and practiced what I wanted to say and now I’m messing it up,  _ damn  _ it, I don’t know how to be vulnerable even when I’m trying—”

“That’s alright,” Ayda says pulling her closer, tucking Fig’s head under her chin. “There are plenty of things we don’t know how to be.”

For a while they’re both quiet and Ayda takes a moment to look around the room. There’s a big window on one wall, with soft looking blue curtains hanging on either side. There’s a desk beneath it with a small pile of presents that appear to be wrapped with various levels of expertise, a chair with what must be a custom back—made to accommodate a large pair of wings, she thinks. The bed they’re sitting on has about eight throw pillows, one of which looks like an orange slice; Ayda immediately loves that pillow so much it almost hurts.

It’s clear from the room that someone has gone to a great deal of care putting it together, has combed through months of conversation looking for things that Ayda likes or wants from a space or has ever been inconvenienced by.

Fig’s horns frame the sides of Ayda’s face as she breathes in the smell of Fig’s hair.

“It’s good,” she says, as Fig lets out a shuddering exhale. “It’s good. Thank you.”

“I never. I never want to be apart from you,” Fig murmurs, pulling the pillow away from her face. “I just want everything to be perfect, you’re so perfect and you make me feel so  _ much  _ that I just, I don’t know. I don’t want to mess up.”

“I’m here,” it feels like an oath, to say these words. “I’m here, you don’t need to convince me to stay, I already made my decision.”

\---

Ayda has no notes on being welcome somewhere new. It never came up on Leviathan, and she knows—she knows to bring a gift when you visit someone in a new home, she knows to compliment something about a house, she knows hospitality rituals from dozens of regions thanks to her books, but they never applied to  _ her. _

She and Fig sit up, the first night, and hammer out a contract for her residence here. Fig says they don’t have to make one, but Ayda sees the relief when she adds clauses that say she can leave if she ever wants to, that there is no pressure to remain here. That this is not a debt she is paying.

“I don’t want you to be stuck with me,” Fig yawns at around four in the morning. “I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

“You are not an obligation,” Ayda says, but she sees the way it doesn’t stick. Repetition may be needed for this point.

She begins keeping new notes in the notebook Adaine gives her, the one that will never run out of pages. Her room in the manor is on the second floor and faces eastward; each morning the sunrise comes through the windows and plays across her things, the tin orange from Gorgug and the ship in a bottle from Fabian, the friendship bracelets from Kristen and the business card from Riz.

\---

**Ayda:** Gorgug, you have been in a relationship. 

**jorjuj:** that is correct 

**Ayda:** Fig and I are in a relationship. 

**jorjuj:** that’s awesome she really likes you 

**Ayda:** Has she expressed this sentiment to you, her friend, unprompted. 

**jorjuj:** yeah she was just talking about it 

**jorjuj:** anyway what’s up 

**Ayda:** What do people in Elmville do when they are in a relationship? 

**jorjuj:** what’s your experience with ice cream?

**Ayda:** It makes an excellent sandwich.

**jorjuj:** right ok first: true. second: inviting fig to get ice cream with you is a good idea

**Ayda:** Is that special enough for Fig?

**jorjuj:** for sure she’ll love it

**Ayda:** Thank you for your counsel.

_ Ayda has logged off. Don’t break the PrayerChain! _

\---

It would be incorrect to say that the summer passes in a haze. Ayda is acutely aware of each day, each interaction with her friends and their friends and the denizens of Elmville. She is as conscious of her actions and decisions as ever, whether she is deciding what toppings to have on her sundae or what time to go to the movies or if she should invite Fig to the pottery night at the Elmville Community Arts Center.

(She did, and it was both educational and fun.)

So no, the summer does not pass in a haze, or a blur, or any other euphemism for time seeming to move too quickly. But it passes all the same.

Fig goes back to school. Ayda is suddenly left with long stretches of the day where many of her friends are busy in their classes or busy with projects, and she doesn’t want to go to Aguefort, not really, but. Well.

On the days Fig attends school, for she does skip fairly frequently, Ayda does not exactly  _ mope. _ She is not bored—there are her own studies to attend to, there is the application for correspondence courses in arcane theory at Bastion City University that Jawbone helps her fill out, and Fig always answers her texts even if she  _ knows  _ that she’s sent one during a class—but she is not exactly content.

“I think you might be lonely,” Adaine says one night, curled up on a beanbag in her tower. “I worry about you sometimes. I mean, more than I worry about everyone. Sometimes.”

“I’ve been lonely before, Adaine, it is far more acute.”

“I think there are different kinds of loneliness,” she says softly, eyes flitting over to her nightstand. Ayda knows that’s where she keeps important documents—a copy of the treaty between Solace and Fallinel that says Adaine is under no jurisdiction of the elves, new notes on spells, stilted correspondence with her sister.

“Do you think,” Adaine says carefully, “that there might be something that would make you happier? I don’t mean that you don’t seem happy, but... I know that life here is good, but could it be better?”

It’s an interesting puzzle. Adaine is a brilliant colleague and a clever friend, to generate this mystery. Ayda cannot see an immediate solution.

\---

It is Gilear who sparks the solution, actually. 

It is Gilear who has a library book that is three months overdue, and a flat tire, and a weak constitution in the face of library fines. 

He comes by for breakfast one morning, likely at Fig’s insistence, tie askew and briefcase coming open. He trips on nothing between the kitchen and the dining room, and Fig’s quickness is enough to save him from a head-on collision with the floor but not enough to keep his papers in order. The book is present and the sight of it alone makes him blanch. 

Ayda takes the book back for him, sure in her ability to set terms for a repayment plan.

She steps out of the library with a part-time job offer.

\---

**Ayda:** Adaine, I require your advice.

**boggys-buddy:** please do not ask me something about romance

**Ayda:** It is not about romantic relationships. I need to thank someone for something.

**boggys-buddy:** okay, sure. do you want to send a card or something?

**Ayda:** Do they make cards for “thank you for your overdue library book, it resulted in my employment”?

**boggys-buddy:** !!!!!!!

**boggys-buddy:** you got a JOB???? wait, because of a book??

**boggys-buddy:** you got a job because of GILEAR???

**Ayda:** The Elmville Community Library has seen fit to offer me a position.

**Ayda:** Apparently I have “a way with the patrons” and “several lifetimes of experience”.

**boggys-buddy:** both very true statements

**boggys-buddy:** a card is probably fine in this case but you may need to make it

**Ayda:** Ah. I will consult with Kristen then; she is very proficient in all things arts and crafts.

**boggys-buddy:** this is such great news, i hope everything goes well!

_ Ayda has logged off. Don’t break the PrayerChain! _

\---

“Making molotov cocktails in the library is prohibited,” she tells the Cubby children firmly. “Not because it is dangerous to the state when sources of approved ‘knowledge’ are threatened, though that is a good argument, but because it puts the other patrons at risk. Please check your supplies at the entrance. You may retrieve them when you leave.” 

“Promise?” the youngest Cubby demands. 

“I try to make as few promises as possible,” Ayda says. “We can draft a contract, if you’d like, but I do not think you are interested in that.” 

The children shake their heads in response. Ayda thinks for a moment.

"I can offer a more informal deal, then. If you entrust your supplies into my care for the duration of your time in the library, I will teach you something.”

The children have a quick debate, though not a particularly quiet one. The volume does not bother Ayda and this section is fairly deserted, so there are no other patrons she needs to consider. She is meant to be re-shelving books at this moment, but is taking initiative to prevent the library from burning down. This is what you have to do sometimes, she’s learned through her time with her friends. If you want to stop something from burning down, you have to step in.

The kids separate once more, various bottles and chemical agents now piled on the floor. “You have to teach us something  _ useful,”  _ the youngest one insists.

“Agreed,” Ayda says, gathering their contraband and locking it in a locker at the library entrance. One of the other lockers is currently pulsing with extradimensional dark energy, and another appears to be slowly melting. She takes a moment to register the rate that the metal is losing integrity, before noting that it is within acceptable library parameters. 

“We will have this lesson at one of the round tables,” she offers, and the children trail in her wake. “Both because it establishes us as equals, and because the round tables are my favorite area of the library.”

This is how she begins a lesson on the behavior of magical fire when compared to non-magical fire.

\---

“I truly dislike parties,” she tells Zelda Donovan over the din. The house is full of noise and people, Aguefort students celebrating homecoming in a distinctly rowdy manner. “However, Fig invited me.” 

Zelda nods and says, “If you want, there’s a tree outside that nobody ever climbs. I brought a video game—have you played it?” 

The title is unfamiliar, but Zelda lends it to her anyway. Nestled in the boughs of a tree in the front yard, Ayda begins figuring out the system of buttons and toggles that allow her character to move about the screen. 

Fig checks in throughout the night, clearly energized from the people and the praise for her new music. She’s taken control of the party playlist through no small measure of force and she looks up at Ayda with a grin, hair a little wild.  _ A masterpiece,  _ Ayda thinks,  _ the fall of my beloved’s hair, the slant of her shoulders, the interlocking of our fingers. _

“You good?” Fig calls up, and there is not enough poetry in the world to capture the flutter of Ayda’s heart.

“Yes,” she calls back, and Fig’s smile gets even wider. 

“Good! I saw Adaine earlier, is it okay if I send her your way? It’s a little loud in there for her tastes,” it is not too loud for Fig, Ayda knows, because Fig thrives on movement and lights and volume. Fig is being careful, though—Fig is always so, so careful about Ayda’s space, still concerned with her presence after all this time.

Ayda has read a lot about friendship, and a lot about love. Maybe this is part of both those things, for Fig—maybe she’s a little careful all the time. Maybe she will always be.

Ayda nods and encourages Fig back to the party with a smile of her own.

When Adaine hauls herself up the tree, invisible, and settles at Ayda’s side, she just angles the screen so the characters are more easily visible. They do not talk about the party, or the week at school, or the latest letter that came from Fallinel.

A cool breeze blows over the neighborhood, and Ayda can feel the bass of the party music thrumming in her ribcage. She can hear her friends shouting in the distance, knows that there’s some kind of Seven Maidens vs. Bad Kids Night Frisbee game going on tonight, knows that their shouts are of excitement and not battle. It helps, that if they were shouts of battle she could be there in an instant.

“Do you want some food?” Adaine asks quietly, and Ayda shakes her head.

She isn’t hungry, just contemplative. Just happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just. want them. to be happy?? i cried writing this??????????? scout mom sandralynn aka the sandralynn/happiness pairing we deserve i just want her to get to do ranger Stuff. part of the fantasy of this story is the job market lol. elmville residents: go to the library carrying Dangerous and Volatile magical items. The librarians: hiss like an angry cat. elmville residents: i will put this... over there. Please stop making that noise.  
> leave a comment and let me know what you think!! i love ayda i want her to be happy!!


End file.
